Kevin Lujan Lee is a PhD candidate in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning. In Aotearoa/New Zealand, he will study how Pasifika-serving community organizations produce the boundaries of Indigeneity, race, and ethnicity within which low-wage Pasifika workers navigate the institutions of labor market regulation. This will comprise one-half of his broader dissertation project — a comparative study of Indigenous Pacific Islanders and low-wage work in 21st-century empires. His research is only made possible by activists in the U.S. immigrant labor movement and global LANDBACK movement, who envision a world beyond labor precarity and Indigenous dispossession. Lee hopes to pursue an academic career to support the work of these movements. Lee won a Fulbright New Zealand award last year but had to reapply to the competition when his grant was canceled due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Learn more about the thirteen other MIT Fellows, here.
